Tim Collard is a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany. He is an active member of the Labour Party.

We're too wet to deal with illegal immigrants, so we take it out on legitimate ones

I’ve discovered who’s to blame for the immigration problem. It’s me. I am solely responsible for bringing into this country an unwarranted foreign body, and those stalwart chaps at the Home Office are quite rightly doing all they can to thwart me. Mea culpa – with millions of no doubt excellent true-blue British women to choose from, I have irresponsibly chosen to marry a Chinese and try to settle her here.

The aim of UK immigration policy is to try to offset the millions of illegal immigrants we are too wet to do anything about by making it as difficult as possible to introduce legitimate ones. When I was in our Embassy in China, I once appealed to a big cheese from London to make it a bit easier for important business people with money to spend to get into the UK. I was told that there was a big illegal immigration problem from China, which I knew, and that we had to man the defences with ever greater vigilance. The fact that the illegals who are brought in on the back of lorries have never seen the inside of a British visa office was considered irrelevant. We had to do our best to keep down the numbers where we had the power to, i.e. among the relatively legitimate visitors, to make up for all the gangsters’ passengers we couldn’t control. Of course, for those who believe in purely numerical constraints on immigrants, this would be fine.

Meanwhile, there is my lady wife, who has been here two years already and now needs to apply for permanent leave to remain. There are three ways to apply: in person, by post, and from another country. In person would obviously be best, but we were told all through August that there were no more appointments left in August. So we waited until August 28th, when we were told that there were no appointments in September either. She has to have her application in by 17th September, and wasn’t allowed to apply until 28 days in advance. So the apply-in-person option didn’t in fact exist. The postal route was a possibility, assuming one can trust the post not to lose things, but the “target” response time for this route is six months, with a target of 95% response within this time. And – the real killer – it’s not just that she has to send her passport into the Home Office limbo for that period, but I have to as well. Now, this isn’t on: like a lot of people, I need to travel. That leaves flying to Beijing. I wouldn’t mind that, but it’s not exactly the cheap option. And can I discuss this with anyone? You’ve guessed it – not a chance. No phone numbers anywhere – I may just have to go to the Borders Agency in Liverpool and try, with little optimism, to rustle someone up.

Immigration formalities are clearly made as impenetrable as possible in the hope that people will give up. You’re made the beggar at every turn; if you don’t like that situation, the hint is, you can always eff off. I can’t help thinking that my wife might have done better to claim political asylum on arrival, rather than entering as the wife of a man with 20 years Crown service.